In radio telecommunications networks today, it is important that operators continuously monitor and evaluate performance of a system. Performance information may be gathered in base stations in the system and be reported to an operation and maintenance (O&M) system of the operator for evaluation. In some systems, performance management (PM) counters are used to evaluate the performance of a system. A PM counter may count dropped calls for a circuit switch connection, throughput for a packet data connection, and many other things. In a system using PM counters, the PM counters are the prime source of data when evaluating the performance and trouble shooting the system. The PM counters are hard coded in the base stations of the system. For example, if something “x” occurs in the system, a hard coded counter “PMx” is incremented in the base stations based on a request from an O&M node. Another example is that the throughput, delay or something similar of a connection is measured and that will update certain defined PM counters for that connection.
A problem with the counter technology is that the number of different possible PM counters increases exponentially with the complexity of the system. For example, assume that the operator wants to measure something by the PM counter Pmxyz where x[1 . . . l], y [1 . . . m], and z [1 . . . n] the user defines the different possibilities of a measure entity (Ent) (x[1 . . . l], y [1 . . . m], z [1 . . . n.]). The Ent may be E-UTRAN Radio access bearer (ERAB) establishment and x[1 . . . l], y [1 . . . m], z [1 . . . n], might be ERAB, Mobile type, Quality of service profile, etc. Then the system must support all possible combinations of x, y and z, i.e. l*n*m PM counters although the actual system at one particular operator is only using a subset of x, y and z. Furthermore, even if the different combinations are known and it is somehow possible to configure the PM counters that shall be used for that particular system, there is still a risk for errors due to incorrect definitions of the PM counters or not updated definitions of the PM counters. Hence, reported result from an erroneous defined PM counter will result in an erroneous performance analysis at the O&M node.